Grey Matter Bergen

“Stabbur” is a traditional Norwegian construction for storing food. We propose a revisited stabbur for storing local stories of our elders in the city of Bergen, Norway. Grey Matter is a project about how we grow old and live in the center of cities. By documenting the lives of our elders, the project contradicts the common belief that activity and productivity belong solely to the youth and criticizes the segregation of seniors that consigns them to isolation, passivity, and dependence and claims that a productive city can also be inclusive to provide safety and freedom in an intergenerational context. There is an opportunity to revitalize existing urban structures by placing seniors at the heart of our urban life, harnessing the total ecology of health to create new durable socioeconomical bonds.